I am honored to have received a Fulbright Academic and Professional Excellence fellowship to conduct this research. I hope that friends, family and colleagues are following the adventure. And some of you have actually joined me in India!

I will be here for exactly 12 weeks—arriving on a Thursday and leaving on a Thursday. Today is exactly six weeks in and six to go.

The vitality of the public and not-so-public dialogue on caste, class and race is shaking me up. India is as ideologically polarized as the US, but the conversations—and rants—are more articulate and openly grounded in the struggle for power. Trump’s semi-literate followers cheer at his racist sloganeering. Here, when similar sentiments are expressed in Parliament by the national government’s Minster in charge of Human Resource Development, she quotes Cicero and, in an exchange with another woman legislator, shouts, “And if you are unsatisfied with my reply, then I will cut my head, and put it before your feet.” The idiom is lost on me, but not the passion. The HRD Minister is defending the government’s repression of student dissent. Student netas (leaders) have been jailed, journalists beaten in the courthouse and a professor was shot at. This in the name of nationalism, patriotism and a status quo wherein 800 million people live in the cliché of “abject poverty.”

Went out to clear my head and get some fruit from the vendor outside campus. Got a kiwi, bananas and a little potato-looking thing that tastes like caramel. Then a bird pooped on my head. I plucked a couple of leaves off a plant, cleaned up and contemplated the irony of “clearing my head.”

I spent last evening with a feminist collective that has been meeting weekly since the early ‘80s. We met in the Women’s Centre in Santa Cruz. So much was familiar to me–the space with posters, stacks of books and old flyers, the women of a certain age with short hair, glasses and comfortable clothes and the focus of the meeting on preventing domestic violence and promoting gender justice. The familiarity feeds me in this strange place where so much is unfamiliar. However, they speak loudly, interrupt each other and give freely of unsolicited advice without fear of hurt feelings and fragile psyches unrecovered from long ago traumas. Life is more present here and change more urgent.

And here in India my wishy/washy frigging “progressive” politics feel dull, benumbed and useless. There is a battle between the powerful and the powerless, between those who take and those who produce. Here 800 million people provide the labor that builds all wealth. Caste reinforces divisions of labor and the social oppression of many for the benefit of the few. Religious differences are fanned by elites to control festering frustration. Women are at the bottom of all hierarchies and their unpaid and uncounted so-called “household” labor holds the entire pyramid up. And there is a left and a right: the right defends the status quo and “stability” while those on the left, in spite of many differences of analysis, strategy and tactics, speak clearly about who is on what side of the battle between the elites and the people. And that battle has a name and it’s name is capitalism.

But at home it is Bernie v. Hillary. It seems pathetic from here. Hillary Clinton, by birth, experience and positions, is a member of the capitalist elite. She has never been and never claimed to be of the left. (I have not read US papers today so she may have actually claimed this by now.) I have many friends who are political centrists and their support for her makes sense. But for my friends and comrades who have spent their lives organizing against racism and sexism and for the rights and power of a united multi-racial US working class, my unsolicited advice from India is that support for Hilary is support for capitalism and the continued political and economic supremacy of the elite oligarchs.

Support Bernie because he comes close and because he is raising the problem of class. Or sit it out because he does not go far enough and the revolution will not be won by voting in bourgeois elections. Ah, the language of my youthful conversion to socialism has been liberated in India! Feels very good.

7 Responses to Rambling thoughts on the half-anniversary of my first trip to India

Hi Susan, great to read your posting this morning.Sparks lots of thinking of Bernie/Hillary and things capitalist and socialist. Remember the good old 70’s when we argued about Capitalism vs Patriarchy as the greater oppression? Much love to you on your next 6 weeks and to continued clearing of the head- maybe without bird poop! xoxo Brian

Great way to start my day. Far better than the local “rag”. I remember being faced with similar in-your-face poverty and contradictions in Mocambique in the late 80s. As Brian says, hope the head clearing continues, without bird poop. And that your progressive eyes and ears continue to inform what you see and hear. I so look forward to in-person analysis.

Let’s start with a HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MISSY! Ok, that out of the way, you had me in tears. It does feel good, doesn’t it, to just be what we know we are! It is such a revealing thing to leave this capitalist wasteland and experience life in anyplace other than the western developed countries. Your observations and revelations are really important at this time, Susan. Yes, it has to be Bernie and yes, Hillary is a total capitalist with all the trappings of her class and it’s speak from the side of her mouth style. Love you to smithereens, dear one. Look forward to more and hugs!…….Sara